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Looking Back Quotes

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Looking Back Quotes

“Your life is written in indelible ink. There's no going back to erase the past, tweak your mistakes, or fill in missed opportunities. When the moment's over, your fate is sealed. But if look closer, you notice the ink never really dries on any our experiences. They can change their meaning the longer you look at them. Klexos. There are ways of thinking about the past that aren't just nostalgia or regret. A kind of questioning that enriches an experience after the fact. To dwell on the past is to allow fresh context to trickle in over the years, and fill out the picture; to keep the memory alive, and not just as a caricature of itself. So you can look fairly at a painful experience, and call it by its name. Time is the most powerful force in the universe. It can turn a giant into someone utterly human, just trying to make their way through. Or tell you how you really felt about someone, even if you couldn't at the time. It can put your childhood dreams in context with adult burdens or turn a universal consensus into an embarrassing fad. It can expose cracks in a relationship that once seemed perfect. Or keep a friendship going by thoughts alone, even if you'll never see them again. It can flip your greatest shame into the source of your greatest power, or turn a jolt of pride into something petty, done for the wrong reasons, or make what felt like the end of the world look like a natural part of life. The past is still mostly a blank page, so we may be doomed to repeat it. But it's still worth looking into if it brings you closer to the truth. Maybe it's not so bad to dwell in the past, and muddle in the memories, to stem the simplification of time, and put some craft back into it. Maybe we should think of memory itself as an art form, in which the real work begins as soon as the paint hits the canvas. And remember that a work of art is never finished, only abandoned.”

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Author:John Koenig
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“And Each Time You Halt and Look Back, You’ll Realise Everything in Life was Planned and Nothing Ever was Accidental, it was Never A Coincidence it was Always Him. The Happiness, The Pain, The Lessons, The Blessings, The Lost Hopes and Forgotten Dreams, The Endings and Beginnings, Everything fell in your Lap as was His Design. And then You know, it was Never for Nothing, Everything meant Something that Probably will Make sense Someday. Until Then, Keep the Faith, Walk the Path and Wear Your Grace as Your Most Ornate Armour and Know in Your Heart, Nothing was Ever Accidental and Everything was A Part of His Plan and Always Will Be, and the Most Funny and Reassuring Truth, Your Soul Chose It All, Long Before you Took This Human Shell, Long Before You Knew the Wound of Pain and the Balm of Healing, Long Before this Human Halt, Long Before this Winter of Life that stands only for a while before the Spring walks in to remind you How Nothing Stays forever, not even the Pain or the lingering Halt of it all.”

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Author:Debatrayee Banerjee
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“In every man’s life there are moments where looking to the past may ruin the future and in those moments walking forward without looking back is the best thing one can ever do!”

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Author:Mehmet Murat Ildan
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“Founders never leave our memories for they leave indelible footprints on our minds. They give us the reasons to look back and ponder. They give us the reasons to look forward with the hope and aspirations to beating their footprints of distinctiveness. Their mistakes are our lessons and the reasons to reason.”

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Author:Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
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“The past may or may not be a foreign country. It may morph or lie still, but its capital is always Regret, and what flushes through it is the grand canal of unfledged desires that feed into an archipelago of tiny might-have-beens that never really happened but aren't unreal for not happening and might still happen though we fear they never will. And I thought of Ole Brit holding back so much, as we all do when we look back to see that the roads we've left behind or not taken have all but vanished. Regret is how we hope to back into our real lives once we find the will, the blind drive and courage, to trade in the life we're given for the life that bears our name and ours only. Regret is how we look forward to things we've long lost yet never really had. Regret is hope without conviction, I said. We're torn between regret, which is the price to pay for things not done, and remorse, which is the cost for having done them. Between one and the other, time plays all its cozy little tricks.”

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Book:Enigma Variations
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“Some things are exactly how we leave them. Years go by and we long, passion builds, loss extends and we miss forbidden memories. Every once in awhile I long for what used to be instead of what is. I remember how I left it, last words said, how your voice echoes. It’s not sadness. It’s not quite happiness. It was bittersweet. Things were bittersweet. I still think of it quite often and wonder if the memories for you ever soften.”

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Author:Dominic Riccitello
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“The Reaping by Stewart Stafford Paint a nostalgic landscape today, A harvest gifted once in this way, Stranger's yields come to pass, Only that season's memory lasts. A fallow field to revisit in time, Golden reaping of a private mind, As gleaners, newcomers gather, Reminiscence thickens to slather. As the body grows old like the land, With crop circles on backs of hands, In solstice, your seed does replenish, Past where scars of life can blemish. © Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.”

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Author:Stewart Stafford
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“I've learned that God sometimes allows us to find ourselves in a place where we want something so bad that we can't see past it. Sometimes we can't even see God because of it. When we want something so bad, it's easy to mistake what we truly need for the thing we really want. When this sort of thing happens, and it seems to happen to everyone, I've found it's because what God has for us is obscured from view, just around another bend in the road. In the Bible, the people following God had the same problem I did. They swapped the real thing for an image of the real thing. We target the wrong thing and our misdirected life's goal ends up looking like a girl or a wide-brimmed hat or a golden calf. All along, what God really wants for us is something much different, something more tailored for us. [...] And when each of us looks back at all the turns and folds God has allowed in our lives, I don't think it looks like a series of folded-overs that have shaped our lives. Instead I think we'll conclude in the end that maybe we're all a little like human origami and the more creases we have, the better.”

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Book:Love Does: Discover a Secretly Incredible Life in an Ordinary World
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“I hurt myself deeply, though at the time I had no idea how deeply. I should have learned many things from that experience, but when I look back on it, all I gained was one single, undeniable fact. That ultimately I am a person who can do evil. I never consciously tried to hurt anyone, yet good intentions notwithstanding, when necessity demanded, I could become completely self-centred, even cruel. I was the kind of person who could, using some plausible excuse, inflict on a person I cared for a wound that would never heal.”

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Book:South of the Border, West of the Sun
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“Looking back on the event, I find myself thinking there are three approaches to journalism represented here. One is the "cool" approach of traditional journalism, including network broadcasting in which NPR is no exception. One is the "hot" approach of talk radio, which has since expanded to TV sports networks and now Fox TV. The third is the engaged approach of weblogging.”

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Author:David "Doc" Searls
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“Ambition is the desire to go forward and improve one's condition. It is a burning flame that lights up the life of the individual and makes him see himself in another state. To be ambitious is to be great in mind and soul. To want that which is worth while and strive for it. To go on without looking back, reaching to that which gives satisfaction.”

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Book:Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey
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